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If I Was Emperor…
Apparently, some Swedes are worried that Putin has his eye on Scandinavia for a future playground. I will let Annika fill y’all in later.
Though I am fairly sure that Putin is not done helping poor lost Russians in neighboring states to secure their due right to rejoin the empire, I find it difficult to imagine an invasion of Sweden before an invasion of Estonia or Latvia. I suspect that the order of conquest will follow the path of least resistance. But perhaps not.
In any case, can we agree that would-be conquerors everywhere probably perceive Obama’s remaining years in office as an ideal time for action?
If so, might they take bigger bites than they otherwise would because of the limited window of opportunity?
Or, if you were emperor, would you let Obama’s presidency play out peacefully, in hope that America will weaken and withdraw further… and that the next American President will also be a Democrat?
Image Credit: “Map of Scandinavia” by 000peter – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Published in Foreign Policy, General
I disagree! Most countries have no moral compass: they kiss up to whomever is strong.
Liberals admire China and Russia for being able to dictate policy without any of those silly checks and balances.
Putin got away with the Ukraine. He’ll keep rolling.
Not to be a pain, but is it, “If I was Emperor…” or is it “If I were Emperor…”?
You might be right….but has Putin really gotten away with Ukraine? That issue still seems in doubt and I’d argue that in no small part because he knows he can’t get away with a more aggressive move.
iWc is absolutely correct at #31.
Thoroughly agree with WC as well. Hillary Clinton is a Marxist, but shrewd enough to realize she can’t thoroughly compromise our military power or she’d endanger the very sources necessary to provide that wealth she is so determined to spread around.
1) Germany, Poland, Italy, Sweden, Finland and Romania have no militaries?
2) The US has over 4,000 tanks in active service, and another 4,000 in reserve. These being the best tanks in the world too. The US has the largest…modern…tank force in the world, by about 10 times. Israel doesn’t even come close.
3) Russia’s military is no match for any combination of NATO militaries.
4) These incursions by submarine into Swedish waters were a regular occurrence, so nothing new, or particularly threatening. There was a joint Swedish-Danish submarine exercise in the area last week, which might explain why there may have been a Russian sub snooping nearby.
No reason to panic here. Putin knows his military is mostly a collection of old junk. All his moves are intended for internal consumption for his own populace.
Who is going to stop him? He is limited by his own military limitations, which are real. But even with all the problems his military has, Russia is a man among boys.
The UK has fewer tanks (320) than horses, and France only a few more. From 20 armoured divisions (6,000 tanks) in Germany during the Cold War, the U.S. Army has only two companies (29 tanks) in Europe and only 1,232 in service worldwide. By contrast, Israel fields almost 1,500 top line Merkava III and IV tanks and has 3,400 in service (more than all of the EU combined).
Link.
Simply untrue. Way back in the mists of time (Serbia/Kosovo) all of Continental Europe could barely muster a few operational helicopters.
If the US is not going to fight (and under Obama, do you really think we would?) then Central Europe has no force projection.
It is the unintended consequence of Welfare (social or military): when you guarantee that someone can rely on others, they lose the ability to rely on themselves.
On paper, the Europeans match up ok against Russia when you look at aggregate amounts of front line modern weapons. Compare the aggregate numbers of Rafale and Eurofighter against the aggregate numbers of modern Fulcrums and Flankers. Similarly compare modern tanks, etc.
In practice, it’s all Russia. Europe is totally fractured. Eastern European militaries are likely heavily penetrated by
SovietRussian agents. Russia can pick a place of attack and individually engage weaker European countries with 20-to-1 advantage. Imagine Russia throws a force of 400 tanks supported by 400 aircraft at rump Ukraine.Or imagine throwing 75-100 tanks (and proportional amounts of other ground assets) supported by 75-100 aircraft at each of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Ukraine.
Your link is clearly misinformed. But, nonetheless, this is a rather pointless argument.
Tanks and militaries aren’t comprised of “numbers”. They are comprised of technologies, men, training and support systems. The UK has about 390 tanks, to be exact. But I’m not sure any army in the world would want to go against 390 Challenger II tanks, and the rest of the British military.
So again, numbers mean nothing here. How well they fight, means everything.
Why would the US keep 6,000 tanks in Europe, today? Why would it even keep 29 tanks, for that matter?
Israel doesn’t have anywhere near 3,400 tanks in service. It has about 1,100 Mk IV and III tanks. That’s about it. All else is scrapped or retired.
There were about 390 non-US NATO aircraft which participated in Operation Allied Force.
Has Obama done anything in the last 6 years to indicate to you that he is not willing to deploy the US military for all sorts of combat missions? Already forgot about Libya?
BTW, as I recall, it was the GOP that was generally opposed to Operation Allied Force. Or was that only because a Dem president was in place at the time, and now we consider it a good thing? ;)
Cheap political points, as usual…I see.
No force projection is a different thing from…no armies. Which was your original claim. Why would “Central Europe” need force projection? Their armies are intended for their own defense.
The entirety of NATO, minus US, has about 1,500 modern fighter/ground attack aircraft. Not counting Greece and Turkey. With Greece and Turkey, it’s about 2,100.
The entirety of the Russia air force has about 1,400 fighter/ground attack aircraft. Most are technologically far behind the NATO aircraft, and certainly the training and support systems aren’t comparable either. (most may not even be capable of flying)
Where do you see the evidence of them not being able to “rely on themselves”? Individual countries, of course, have limited capabilities. But as a whole…
Or more or less, where do you see the threat here?
And you think invading a NATO country, involves no response from other NATO countries?
In practice, Russia is nothing more than a paper tiger made up of a smidgen of modern equipment in sea of decayed junk, manned by untrained and incapable people, run by drunk generals.
Not only is it absolutely inconceivable that Russia would do anything of the sort, to any NATO country, but it is inconceivable to think of it as capable of challenging NATO military.
Will to fight precedes ability to fight.
Like I said, if Europeans evidently don’t have the will to confront the rise of sharia culture in their cities or even to consider slowing immigration of such non-Western persons, why assume they would have the will to confront a nuclear power?
President Obama is evidently willing to commit American troops and resources to action. But search-and-destroy missions and raining missiles in broken Middle Eastern territories are not the same as a conventional war with a nuclear power.
What does one have to do with the other?
How do you reconcile your views here, with the fact that Britain, France and other European countries have been actively involved in all sorts of military actions over the last few years against…muslim terrorists…throughout Africa and the ME?
Doesn’t seem to fit the reality here.
If anything, the danger on the European side in not confronting Putin comes precisely from the “anti-immigration” parties in Europe: almost all of them are pro-Putin.
Of course they are not. So what’s the point of comparison here?
None.
AIG, you seem to view level-headed analysis as panic – indeed, you label anything that suggests that Obama is not perfect as hysteria.
AIG, you are clearly unaware of the facts if you believe Europe has anywhere near these numbers of aircraft actually in flight condition.
Here is a NYT article on Germany.
Another example: The helicopter division is also in bad disrepair: only seven of the 67 CH-53 transport helicopters are in top condition – that includes those currently used in Afghanistan. A similar fate befell another model. link.
Don’t believe it? Consider the source: This is what the Russians are telling themselves. Now why would they go out of their way to point out German military limitations?
Um, hello?!
Who had a treaty guaranteeing Ukraine’s territorial integrity? In exchange for Ukraine giving up its nukes?
Was that treaty upheld? NO! The US violated the treaty, because it is not willing to fight to save a treaty nation.
Do you REALLY see France fighting to save Estonia from Russia?
Are you aware that Estonia is in NATO?
Are you aware that plenty of sources suggest that Estonia is next?
Inconceivable!
I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
They are willing to augment American forces against distant armies with arsenals that pale in comparison with Russia’s. That doesn’t mean they will commit strongly to defending Eastern European “allies” (with whom they share little culturally or economically) against a thuggish Russia with nuclear attack subs, tanks, bombers, and the power to cut off gas in the winter.
I’m not trying to make Russia out to be a power equal to America or even to united Europe. But Nazi Germany wasn’t beyond control when Hitler seized Czechoslovakia… under a similar play of lies, I might add. Power isn’t everything.
The basic premise of the Cold War still applies. No one wants to start a war between nuclear powers. I suspect that many leaders would allow a great many conquests and horrors before gathering to courage to start that war.
By the way, I don’t mean to present war as the only option. Perhaps there are other ways we can efficiently strongarm Putin. But he knows that Western powers will bend over backward to avoid outright war with him. So he has a lot of leeway to abuse weaker states and to instill his own people with tribal confidence in Russia’s power.
And perhaps Russia is not a greater threat than ISIS or China. But you can bet that WWII won’t be the last time that villains of the world unite to split the attention of would-be police powers. Maybe that’s not our imminent future. But it’s a possibility we should be wary of.
I’m not sure I agree with this, but I can’t help but sympathize with it.
If the demand for oil continues to drop and, despite Obama and his EPA, we continue to increase our production, we might not need to strong-arm Putin. According to Larry Kudlow and others, Putin needs the Brent crude price per barrel to be about $110 in order to keep from cutting social services and the military. It is now at $86. I recall Russian analysts arguing several years ago that if something like this happened, he would have a difficult time staying in power. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
A cornered and bleeding animal is at his most desperate.
To quote myself in #2: The only question for most people now is not whether to be an empire but the best way to be an empire.
It’s not like I want to be right, as that’s pretty depressing to see from my America. But except for a couple of people, this whole series of responses seems to confirm it. Most of y’all are just arguing about the best way to be an empire. Also, as AIG alludes, the argument seems political. Republican emperors are clueless according to Dems and Democratic emperors are cluess according to Republicans. That’s how it is, I guess, when a republic presumes to “protect the world.”
Speaking of which, “protecting the world” as Pelayo in effect points out when explaining why maybe we should let Russia take on Sweden if it comes to that… doesn’t protect the world. All it does is encourage countries that SHOULD be well able to protect themselves to funnel money into social programs instead.
(ET, If I was/were emperor… both are just fine. inflections to indicate grammatical relationships are in decline in English, and have been for the last thousand years, to be replaced by word order and prepositions. The conditional inflection would seem to be on its last legs.)
To those talking about lower oil prices, I seem to recall an oil man telling me that the shale oil pundits think is our future is actually only economical because of high oil prices.
As AIG implies, UKIP are profoundly pro-Putin, who returns the favor by supporting them through Russia Today. I’m not sure that the division sowed is much of a problem, but the odds of them renewing strength, as opposed to advocating surrender, are very low.
I was listening to Mike Rogers, House Intel chair, talking about this yesterday. He wanted joint exercises and training, along with the supply of arms. I think that this was probably sensible. A limited war wouldn’t be such a disaster, and a degree of comfort with that would probably make a true catastrophe less likely.
The problem is less supply of arms than supply of will. A huge fraction of anything we supply to Ukraine or the Baltics will soon end up either in the hands of the Ruskies or fall into disrepair.
There’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem here. In order to make effective use of our arms and training, any country will first need to purge itself of unrepentant communists and other Russian sympathizers. Doing so, however, would provoke the Ruskies.
If pursuing our own interest in survival makes us an empire (with which, obviously, I disagree), then yes, I suppose you are right. But just out of curiosity, why is “my America” not an empire? Were not the indigenous peoples conquered and American territory expanded enormously? How big may a country be without being called an empire? And to take up a subject closer to your heart, if a city annexes a suburb, is it being imperial and, therefore, in principle bad?
You don’t need to purge the whole army. Having some loyal elite units would be fine, and you should be able to safely train and equip those units without too much of it going missing.
Ah, Sandy, you have made my day. I didn’t really know anyone was paying that close attention to my various ramblings. Interesting question about cities and suburbs. Unfortunately I don’t have any really good answer right now.
As for early American imperial inclinations, yes there were many, and far from trivial. I would certainly be intersested in a rewind of history that allowed for a non-expansionary original republic to see how that might have played out. But, sadly, we were expansionary. Still, I’ll take 1898 as the huge turning point. Before that we were expansionary and imperialistic but into a mostly empty continent and no further. In fact, despite the desires of some, we didn’t take land with significant population from Mexico in 1848.
As for a country pursuing its own interests… that normally is acceptable in a large way only within its borders or possibly very close to its borders, at least to dedicated anti-imperialists. Empires, though, have deep interests far from home that they are forced to defend. That America believes it has to do that could actually be called a piece of evidence that America is, in fact, an empire.